In my family's old apartment in the hallway, we had a picture of a large group of soldiers from a war I had never heard of. I would ask my mom who the people in the picture were and why we had it. She would then answer that it was a picture of her grandfather Andrew in World War 1. I always forgot which one he was (because everyone looked the same) and sometimes I think my mom forgot to. Later on, my mom told me what she knew about her father’s parents. She told me that my great-grandfather Andrew came from a family of farmers on the northeastern side of Yugoslavia. Andrew’s future was already planned out for him by his father and at the age of 11, he was sent to another part of Europe to be an apprentice tailor. When he was 15 he was forced to go to America by the Hungarians by himself and three years later he went into the army and fought in WW1. After the war, he continued to be a tailor and worked for the army in New Jersey at Camp Kilmer. In 1932 he married Rose Zemanek who had fled from some country or another for a reason no one knows with her mother to America. Here she became a nurse and learned 6 languages. As the years went by they had two kids and one of those kids had a kid and that kid was my mom. 

– Georgia Badonsky

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more